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CHARGE OF AIDING AND ABETTING IN THE
RESCUE OF A FUGITIVE SLAVE.

HELD IN BOSTON, IN FEBRUARY, 1851.

BOSTON :

WHITE & POTTER, PRINTERRS, 4 SPRING LANE.
1851.

A hearing was had in the U. S. court room, and several papers, being affidavits and certificates of a record, were exhibited by the complainant's counsel, as the evidence under the 10th section of the Fugitive Slave Law so called, that Shadrach was a slave in Virginia, that he was owned by said De Bree, and that he escaped on the 3d of May, 1850. At the request of counsel these papers were read, and admitted as evidence in the case, subject to such objections as might be made to their admissibility as legal evidence thereafter.

There were present as counsel for Shadrach, S. E. Sewall, Ellis G..Loring, Charles G. Davis, and Charles List, and as they had not had an opportunity to examine the documents produced by the complainant, and were therefore not satisfied of their sufficiency, they asked for a postponement, to February 18th, and the commissioner adjourned the further hearing of the matter until 10 o'clock, on Tuesday, February 18th, and passed the following order :—

United States of America, District of Massachusetts, February 15th, 1851And now the hearing, of this case being adjourned to Tuesday the eighteenth day of February instant, at ten o'clock in the forenoon, the said deputy marshal, who has made return of this warrant, is hereby ordered to retain the said Shadrach in his custody, and have him before me at the time last mentioned, at the court house in Boston, for the further hearing of the complaint on which this warrant is issued. GEO. T. CURTIS, Commissioner.

On the following Tuesday, P. Riley, Esq., Deputy U. S. Marshal, appeared before the Commissioner, George T. Curtis, Esq., and offered the following return which was annexed to the above order.

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BOSTON, Tuesday, February 18th, 1851.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Massachusetts District, ss.

I hereby certify, in pursuance of law and the foregoing order, the said “Shadrach" named in the foregoing warrant and order, was being detained in my custody in the Court Room of the United States, in the Court House, in said Boston, when the door of said room, which was being used as a prison, was forced open by a mob, and the said "Shadrach" forcibly rescued from my custody. I also annex hereto, and make part of my return an original [printed] deposition, of the circumstances attending the arrest and rescue, and have not been able to retake said Shadrach, and cannot now have him before said Commissioner for reasons above stated. P. RILEY, U. S. Deputy Marshal.

COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS.

Suffolk County.

I, Patrick Riley, of Boston, in the said county, counsellor at law, having been duly sworn, depose and say, that I am, and have been, for fourteen years past, the principal deputy of the United States Marshal for the District of Massachusetts.

That on Saturday morning, February 15th, 1851, about twenty minutes before 8 o'clock, A.M., I was called upon at my residence, by Frederick Warren, one of the U. S. deputy marshals, who informed me that there was a negro man, an alleged fugitive, to be arrested at 8 o'clock, who was supposed to be at Taft's Cornhill Coffee House, near the Court House, and desired to know where the negro should be put in case he should be arrested before I reached the office; that I told him to place him in the United States Court Room,-and that I would come to the office immediately, that 1 came down almost immediately to the office, where I arrived shortly after 8 o'clock, and there found Mr. Warren, who informed me that the negro was unknown to Mr. Sawin, deputy marshal, to whom the warrant was handed on the night previous, as I have been informed, though no notice of it had been given to any occupant of the marshal's office,-and that the negro was unknown to any one of the marshal's deputies or assistants,-that Mr. Warren

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